Biology theory (Non-mathematical)
Biology theory, focusing on development and evolution, and their
relationship.
I use operational definitions for development (predictable directional
change) and evolution (the irreversible accumulation of historical
information
= individuation), which allows these concepts to be generalized.
I am a critic of Darwinian
evolutionary theory -- which was my own erstwhile field of
specialization
in biology. My opposition is fundamentally to its sole reliance
on competition
as an explanatory principle (in a background of chance). Aside from being
a bit thin in the face of complex systems, it has the disadvantage, in
the mythological context of explaining where we come from, of reducing
all evolution to the effects of competition. I see this as morally vicious,
if understandable in the genealogical sense that it serves as a myth
congenial to Capitalism. Motivated thus, I have found that upon close
examination there are many limitations on the power of Darwinian
explanations.
For example, it would appear that population genetics theory has been
(for over 60 years) limited, IN GENERAL, to modeling changes only in
single traits (see "Analysis and Critique of the Concept of
Natural Selection"
[here]).
This limitation is no conceptual problem if we place Darwinian
explanation
in the context of developmentalism (see below), but then natural selection
can no longer be the sole factor in evolution, but must function as
a handmaiden to self-organizing processes, as suggested by David Depew
and BruceWeber in Darwinism Evolving.
I note further that the idea
of natural selection must be among the fittest of ideas in our social
climate. It has spread from evolutionary biology to immunology,
developmental
biology, psychology, economics, philosophy of science, sociology,
information
science, etc. It appears to be an idea that can adapt to any material
whatever, driving out, in the process, ideas that were native in the
various discourses (like instructional models in immunology). Being
materially empty, it appears capable of explaining almost anything, and
so we need to be cautious about its use. Is it a Borgesian cognitive
poison?

Developmentalism The perspective that
all material systems undergo a development from immature through mature
to senescent (which is followed by recycling or rejuvenation). In order
to see this, one has to look at very general aspects of systems, such as
thermodynamic and information theoretic properties. A key supposition
of developmentalism is that if a material system is interpreted as evolving,
then it must be undergoing developmental changes as well. I use
the following
general definitions: development is made up of predictable
directional changes (or, deleting the observer, constitutive changes);
evolution is the accumulation of historical information. The
dialectical model of Fichte and Hegel offers a general approach to
development
in the context of natural philosophy, where it may for some purposes be
useful to construct development as a subjective process -- see internalism,
below.

Infodynamics: This neologism (for
information dynamics) refers to a combination of thermodynamics and
information theory. Based in the formal identity of Boltzmann's
interpretation
of physical entropy (as disorder) and the Shannon / Wiener formulation
of information carrying capacity (as variety) (see "The Mutual Implication
of Physical and informational Entropies" [here]),
my own version of it advances the plausible inference (supported by data
from many different fields) that the number of informational constraints
necessarily increases during the development of dissipative structures as
they mature and senesce. Thermodynamically, development of
individual dissipative
structures follows a canonical pattern of mass-specific energy dissipation
increase followed by a decrease into senescence, as systems appear to become
entrained by the minimum entropy production principle of Ilya Prigogine (A.I.
Zotin, and of Sven Jørgensen as well). I postulate this decline to
result from an increased rigidity imposed upon systems by information overload,
thus interpreting senescence fundamentally as a general constraint of
materiality.

Thermodynamics Thermodynamics
also has a role in evolutionary theory, signaled by the maximum entropy
production principle (MEP) of Rod Swenson (or, equally, the maximum
energy gradient dissipation principle of Eric Schneider and James Kay),
which has now been shown to be a basic physical principle by Roderick Dewar.
My own way of putting this is that form facilitates entropy production
increase locally by way of catalyzing the degradation of energy gradients.
Thus: In the material world, gradients, to the extent that they are
steep, tend to generate, or attract and associate with, dissipative
structures
that will degrade them.) So then the presence of form in the universe
can be explained as a result of entrainment by the Second Law of
Thermodynamics
(here I am bearing in mind Aristotle's complex model of causality, by seeing
the Second Law as the ultimate final cause of form -- see the figure [here ]: Where? What? When? Why?). This should be
viewed in light of the cosmological views of David Layzer, Stephen Frautschi
and Peter Landsberg, which posit that matter precipitated from energy because
the expansion of the universe in the Big Bang was too fast for energy to
maintain equilibrium distribution. In its own random search for equilibrium
distribution, matter then collides contingently, forming larger chunks that
are even further away from global equilibrium, raising the intensity of
the universal tendency towards thermodynamic equilibrium even further.
Form appears next, prevailing according to its ability to facilitate entropy
production (viz. Bénard convection). So, we have, using set theoretic
formalism: {energy -> {matter -> {form -> {organization}}}}.(See
the figure [in pdf here] "Levels of Reality and their
Production").

In this understanding aspects of organic evolution can be explained
which have no neoDarwinian explanation (other than chance) -- e.g., the
evolution of homeothermy, or why mammals and birds generally succeeded
reptiles, and why teleost fishes succeeded more primitive forms, as well
as why invertebrates developed mouthparts. As an evolutionary principle,
MEP posits that forms that tend to replace others in evolution are those,
ceteris paribus, which better enhance the degradation of
energy gradients. This applies to the immature stages of
dissipative structures,
not to their senescence, which is characterized instead by specific entropy
production minimization and gross entropy production levelling-off. For
more see [here ] text, The Natural Philosophy
of Entropy

Natural
Philosophy Natural Philosophy
(or the philosophy of nature), is a developmental view of evolutionary
processes, from cosmic evolution to organic (biological) and
cultural evolution (see "Natural Philosophy: Developmental Systems in the Thermodynamic Perspective" [here]),
now including, e.g., MEP (see "The Natural Philosophy of Ecology" [here]).
Its antecedents lie in the Nineteenth Century -- with Comte, Goethe,
Peirce, Schelling, Spencer, etc. It is a perspective that constructs
a science-based story of where we came from and what we are doing here
(see text, Becoming, Being and Passing). It is sometimes known as General
Evolution, and encompasses cosmic, organic and cultural evolutions. Its
goal is an intelligible creation myth (using "myth", not as a pejorative
term, but as it is used in ethnography).

Postmodernism: Postmodernism: by
this I mean a viewpoint critical of the realist pretensions of any
universalist,
totalizing discourse, including science, natural philosophy, and
the Abrahamic
faith religions. It takes seriously the dichotomy: actual / real. That
is, while the actual world is that which you can bump into, or feel as a
toothache, or as a frisson during a ritual, the real world is a global product
of discourse, and consists in texts, inscriptions, models (like MEP and
hierarchy theories), films, equations, experimental setups, simulations,
computer software, symbols, etc. It is the home of the laws of Nature and
the laws of matter, as well as of the gods. This real world has been the
concern of externalist discourses, from theology to science and postmodernism
itself -- wherever the observer sits outside the system being studied. The
actual world is of concern to internalist discourse -- see below.

Materialism: I take materialism
to be a perspective at the intersection of, e.g., phenomenology,
operationalism,
autopoiesis discourse, pragmatism. It seeks intelligibility. I believe
that the primary phenomena that motivate materialism are those of
restriction
and limitation. The material world imposes friction, delay upon messages,
ageing -- in short, material embodiment is the reason why nothing can
be obtained, constructed or cognized instantaneously, or preserved forever.
The material world is not co-extensive with the physical world, which,
as a more general integrative level (or more generally present realm),
can involve superconductivity, global conservation (as in the first law
of thermodynamics), quantum vacuums with frictionless communication between
electrons, and so on. Indeed, electrons (and black holes, genes,
and chemical
bonds) would be systems conceived of as if in the physical world, but not
of the material world, which has connections to internalism. Materialism
is a perspective taken by active, subjective agents, therefore its categories
are in no way projected upon the 'real' world 'out there', which is the
object of externalizing physical discourse. And materialism has nothing
to say about whether or not there is a spiritual world, as is usually thought.
Perhaps dissatisfaction with the material world (as I have described it
here) is itself a clue to why we have the presence of spirituality! In
other words, classical materialism -- the metaphysical stance that there
is nothing in the world but matter in motion -- is not entailed by the view
of materialism embraced here.

Hierarchy Theory: Hierarchy Theory (see
also "Principles of Hierarchy Theory" [here])
encompasses both the scalar hierarchy of nested extensions (represented
as scalar levels, as in [ecosystem [population [organism ]]]), and also the
specification hierarchy of ordered intensional complexity, modeled
as integrative
levels, as in the following example:

{ physical world { chemical world
{ biological
world { social world { mental world }}}}}

Differences in scale of objects or processes are
generally measured in orders of magnitude, while integrative levels are
apprehended when it is discovered that some discourse is insufficient
to deal with certain phenomena, as when we find it impossible to understand
biological systems using only chemical discourse. This requires us to
make a new discourse, signifying a new integrative level.
The specification hierarchy
is fundamentally a pattern of thought, congenial to Natural Philosophy,
and requires that we stipulate an observer in the inmost level, to whom
the system is relevant. So it is not an objective approach, as the scalar
hierarchy can be. The scale hierarchy could even be said to have a
satisfactory mechanistic interpretation.
The specification hierarchy
also supplies a model of development, with the inmost level then being
a unique individual material embodiment of the various classes in the
outer levels, as in {dissipative structure { organism { animal { mammal
{ hominoid { human { male { white { middle class { ageing { Stan Salthe
}}}}}}}}}}}This form, as a model of development, originated with
Aristotle, but it was used prominently by Linnaeus merely to signify new
taxonomic levels. As a model of development, it can also serve as the
basis for a generation myth associated with Natural Philosophy, when the
integrative levels are taken as stages of development of the universe, as
in {physical process -> {chemical affinities -> {biological form
-> societal organization}}}}.
Another view of causal complexity comes
from Aristotle, with his four causal categories (see figure "Where? What?
When? Why?" [here]).

On the problem
of conflating hierarchies in particular examples. [This section
added November 2002].
It must be stated first that scalar
and specification hierarchies are theoretical constructs coming from
particular historical backgrounds -- the former from Middle European systems
thinking, via Bertalanffy and Paul Weiss, the latter from the Marxist
tradition, notably through Joseph Needham. Most actual systems can be
analyzed from either point of view, and this has led to conflating these
structures, and even to statements that actual examples do not
clearly exemplify
either of these systems. In the interest of clarity of thinking, we should
examine an example that invites this problem.
Consider the scale hierarchy: [
population [ organisms [ cells ]]]. [ ] means screening off by size
and dynamical rate differences -- it is a cutting off or delimiting marker
of dynamical boundaries in the formalism of parts and wholes. In this
model of extensional complexity we see that a population contains organisms,
which contain cells, nested within them. It is also implied here that
organism dynamics are constrained by boundary conditions established by
population dynamics (that is, are indirectly affected by results of these
dynamics), and that organism dynamics in turn impose boundary conditions
upon cell dynamics, but the dynamics at each scalar level are screened off
from each other by order of magnitude differences in rates of change, and
so cannot directly interact. As well, constraints from higher to next lower
level are not functionally transitive to the next level below that. Each
level mediates information between contiguous levels, but filters and reworks
it. So the scale hierarchy is characterized only by first order constraint
effects (except for perturbations, as when lightning from a much larger
scale strikes a tree, whose dynamics occur at a lower scale).
Now consider the
specification hierarchy:
{ chemical dynamics { organism dynamics { social dynamics }}}. In this
model of intensional complexity { } implies the local addition of new
constraints upon the dynamics of the lower levels (which would be more
generally present in the world). The symbol { } shows the presence of
a subclass in the model. The creation of a new subclass is an increase
in the specification of local constraints because, formally (from set
theory), some of what is the case at the most general level continues to
be so in all subclasses, but not the reverse. That is, some of the lower
level dynamics here are transitive in toward the higher levels. In this
model of intensional complexity we see that some chemical dynamics (at
some locale) become integrated under biological constraints, and while
some biological dynamics get to be integrated under social constraints,
so do the chemical ones. Chemistry is directly present at both the organism
and social levels.
So, both systems have the same higher
levels imposing constraints on the dynamics of the same lower levels.
Conflation is a danger here. Yet the logic of each hierarchy is different,
and so we need to consider what we are trying to accomplish with our
hierarchical
model. In the scalar system, [ ] is a black box to all higher levels
-- a barrier between, or chunking, of processes, with only non-dynamic,
informational constraints impinging from one level to the next, via some
process of transduction. In the specification system, { } is a selector
such that some of the lower level dynamics pass through to the next (and
some further) higher level(s). { } is a selectively transparent one-way
filter. For example, at the level where social dynamics are taking place,
selected chemical dynamics are also "visible", in their effects upon the
social dynamics, along with the promotion or harnessing of these dynamics
by social ones.
Note that in the scalar system new
levels would emerge between existing ones whenever some constraints from
the higher level have the effect on a receptive lower level of selecting
(entraining) some of the lower level dynamics to chunk into patterns
that change more slowly than do the lower level dynamics themselves (but
not as slowly as the upper level ones), and where some orders of magnitude
still separate all three. This is a differentiation model, with levels
potentially being intercalated as long as there is sufficient rate difference
between the dynamics of any upper and lower level. The three level image
here is crucial to the sense of stability that inheres in the scale hierarchy.
No level's dynamics can be reduced to those of any other level because of
anchoring by the third level that was involved in its emergence and which
continues to exert maintenance constraints. This signals a major difference
from the specification hierarchy.
In the specification hierarchy new
levels emerge at the top of the hierarchy ( { chemical dynamics -->
{ biological dynamics --> {social dynamics}}}). This is functionally
a two level hierarchy, with any level being ready to either collapse back
into a lower one, or to give rise to a new one. Development of new, higher
levels is mediated by the inevitable acquisition of new informational
constraints in material systems -- a process favored by the Second Law
of thermodynamics (and which some call a Fourth Law).
So, the scalar hierarchy embodies
stability, models ongoing processes, and forms a kind of Minkowski block
universe of nested, differently scaled moments, where interpolation of a
new level serves the continued stability of the whole, as a homeostatic
mechanism. Instead, the specification hierarchy models change, as some
lower level dynamics become harnessed by emerging higher level constraints,
and then some of these dynamics might be pulled into affairs at even higher
levels. The levels partially interpenetrate from the bottom up, with scale
difference not acting as a functional category, as processes at the lower
levels become entrained by (integrated into) processes at newly emerging
higher levels (as, for example, when the physical process of diffusion becomes
regulated by the circulatory systems of living systems). So we see that the
two hierarchical formalisms do not serve a single function; one
models stability,
the other change. Therefore, it is not a matter of which one is
more veridical
to actual systems, but of what a modeler is interested in understanding.
We should now examine a randomly chosen particular example of the above
hierarchies.
Suppose we examine a celebration
(or ritual of some kind). Social dynamics impose various rules of behavior
upon the individual biological people. That is , some biological urges
and needs are suppressed for the duration of the celebration, while others,
perhaps digestion, continue as they would under most routine
social constraints.
For the most part, the organism, we might say, is "unaware" of the event
as such. Not entirely, however, as some non-routine activity may
be required,
such as, say, dancing -- an entrainment by socially approved rhythms (and
not others -- no minuets at a rock concert!). Whatever special requirements
are imposed upon the organism will become reflected in the mix of
constraints
(by way of hormones, nerve entrainments, etc.) imposed upon some of the
organism's cells. Going the other way, after some dancing, the oxygen
debt incurred by muscle cells, gets reflected in heavy breathing as its
mass effect within the organism triggers various sensors and actions.
This is likely to be reflected as well at the social level in the traditional
duration of given dances. If social use of "stimulants" is involved, these
will have effects upon the neurons from the chemical level, as well as
on other cells and tissues, leading to altered behaviors by way of changing
the mix of possibilities generated at the cellular level. We could go
on and on, but we need to reflect upon the purpose of our inquiry before
getting lost in details.
The scale hierarchy is primarily
concerned with system stability, with understanding an event like this
as a structure of relations at the different levels during some
representative
moment. How is the whole event held together from level to level? Why
doesn't it just fly apart? Analysis in this mode would result in a fairly
mechanistic model, with dynamical possibilities generated at the cellular
level being selected at the organism level, and behavioral possibilities
generated there being selected by the social level. Lower levels propose
a mix of possibilities, higher ones dispose, by deploying some of the
possibilities in an organized way. Higher ones may also attempt to bias
the mixes of possibilities at lower levels by deploying, say (in this case),
stimulants. One concern of the scalar approach is to oppose reductionism,
by showing that all levels are fully required for any manifestation to
occur.
The specification hierarchy is more
concerned with change. How does one stage in the celebration develop into
the next? How does information from a lower level make itself felt at
increasingly higher levels, thereby explaining why the social system has
drawn in the likes of stimulants, fragrances and other low level biasing
devices? The system might be examined from just the cellular vantage point,
showing how general cellular behavior is increasingly entrained into narrower
and narrower sets of possibilities by the context of the celebration, or how
chemical properties are elicited and focused by the social event. The analysis
would result, not in a nested set of events or dynamics at different scales,
but in a series of arrows indicating what influences what, with feedbacks
between levels, and so on, generally moving irreversibly. It would try to
show the points of introduction of new constraints that destabilize the system,
which then reorganizes around the next stage (rather than collapsing back
to an earlier one) .

Semiotics: From Charles Peirce,
this is the general study of signs and their interpretation, as well as
of the process of semiosis, or, indeed -- the study of the construction
of meaning. It is not restricted to linguistic signs, as in the semiology
of Saussure. The adjective "general" implies that semiosis is more general
than human sign use (anthroposemiosis), and many thinkers have extended
the doctrine of signs to biology (biosemiosis), encouraged especially by
the inviting situation of genetic systems (as in the works of
Jesper Hoffmeyer
and Marcello Barbieri), as well as by the more obvious animal behaviors
(initiated in the seminal work of Jacob von Uexküll). A few of us have
suggested that semiosis must be even more general, on the principle that
nothing that exists at one integrative level, say the biological, was without
precursors, and so we can postulate physiosemiosis (of John Deely) as well,
applying to any dissipative structure, giving us a general
pansemiotic position.
While digital signs operate in a fully semiotic situation, analog signs
may function in vaguer semiosic systems. The key here is to seek relevant
systems of interpretance (see figure: System of Interpretance [here ]). Physiosemiosis interprets the world as triadic
relations, even in the absence of referentiality. Basically this means
that its analysis takes into account not only an object (or system), but
its interactions with others as mediated by a context. All three aspects
-- Peirce's Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness -- must be taken
into account.
Peircean semiotics is irreducibly
triadic -- sign / object / interpretant -- the latter being the product
of a system of interpretance, with the sign being a co-product of the
object and the system of interpretance. This means that semiotics is
a subjective discourse, stipulating particular observers. There can be
no general meanings. A sign means something to someone. So, if we, as
observers, postulate that some chemical signifies food to a snail, not only
do we realize that it may not do so to other animals, but it also may not
seem do so for another kind of observer of snails (say thrushes who eat
them).
Taking this approach implies
a critique of science as it has been, the purpose (social role) of which
has been to deliver knowledge that could be used in the control
or prediction
of natural phenomena -- in the search for power over Nature. In that
context, Nature is best seen as a meaningless spin of matter in motion
(as in traditional materialism), leaving us a free hand, unencumbered
by gods or traditional values. Bringing semiotics into science makes
sense, in my view, only as part of an attempt to use science instead
as an avenue for understanding the world -- that is, in order to bring
it closer to Natural Philosophy.
As noted by Floyd Merrell, signs
grow. That is, they are qualified by other signs in an indefinite chain
of interpretants-as-new-signs. In this way semiosis intersects development
(as described above). Semiosis is a developmental process.

Structuralism: Natural phenomena
are similar to each other in some respects, and differ in others.
Difference
is a conceptually trivial concept. One can always find differences between
any two discriminated items, and, failing this, can mark one to make
it different from the other. In Biology, cladistics provides techniques
for determining precedence in respect to the acquisition of differences,
and neoDarwinism attempts to provide a kind of explanation for how such
differences might have been acquired. In both of these discourses, and,
I believe, in any historicist discourse, similarity is reduced to just
the absence of difference. That is, it is trivialized. But similarity is,
I think, the deeper problem.
Similarity is semiotic, in that
it necessarily involves an observer or system of interpretance (SI). Iconic
signs, like shadows, possess similarity to their objects for a given SI.
Like all signs, they are co-produced by object and SI. But similarity
as a general problem has to do with whether two objects in themselves are
similar, not whether a sign happens to be iconic. Semiotically, this would
mean that two objects must have the same counterstructures (von Uexküll)
with respect to a given SI. Such objects may serve as metaphors of each
other.
When this is the case there arises
a need to explain the similarities. The historicist explanation is that,
if things are similar now, they must have been the same in the past,
since history is the acquisition of difference. This does not explain
the primordial sameness unless it can be attributed to a single ancestral
individual, whose properties then need no explanation other than chance.
This kind of explanation fails utterly in the face of, e.g., similar
cloud formations, or similarities among any other abiotic dissipative
structures -- tree forms and vortices, for example. With these, as
everywhere,
history just produces differences. The physical approach to these similarities
is to claim that such phenomena were informed by the same initial and/or
boundary conditions (that is to say, the same external environmental
conditions)
during their formation, and so turned out similar. For very simple systems
under experimental conditions, this is an adequate explanation, but becomes
increasingly implausible as similarity unites more complex objects in natural
situations, many of which are found in biology. Also, the physical approach
begs the question as to why systems in the same environment may become similar
from different beginnings. In biology this is the problem
of convergent evolution, producing ecological vicariance, as well as similar
vegetations and biomes, in different regions.
What is needed is a positive
tendency toward similarity. We have good mathematical models of such
tendencies in the attractors of dynamical systems. These can also serve
to model the structures of classical structuralism. My view
of structures
is that they are unchanging universal tendencies with similar ontological
status to universal physical constants. Like these, they would have been
frozen in early in the Big Bang, and will not change for its duration.
In a Bang / Crunch scenario, each succeeding Bang would organize its own
structures and constants. Structures neither develop nor evolve,
but material
systems that can access them do. So some structures may never
become accessed
because material systems that could become entrained by them have been
excluded by history. Some structures, like the branching tree, can be
accessed by quite simple systems, but others would require both complexity
and complication. Deep structures are universal potentialities which
reflect the global organization of a particular universe. They are internal
to a given universe, and so could not be reviewed or enumerated externally
(see Internalism, below). One way to think of them would be as sets of
informational constraints, many of which were reduced early in the Universe.
When material systems develop that have reduced constraints that are like
some of those in a deep structure, that system is then entrained toward
reducing, by materially constructing, constraints that would complete the
form in question during its development.
So, any given material phenomenon
or system has some similarity to others that are entrained by the same
structural attractors, as well as differences that can be attributed to
historical accidents. The task is to separate these by way of comparative
study. As an individual system continues to endure, it is likely that its
own history comes to be more important to its form, and so it
becomes increasingly
individuated from others attracted by the same structures. It is
also possible,
however, that, because information gradually accrues to a system as it ages,
it may at some point become complicated enough to access a previously dormant
(for it) or weak attractor, pulling it in a new direction. For any given
material system the pull of structures ranges from strong to very weak,
depending on its form and behavior. Structural attractors act as one kind
of final cause. (See text "Purpose in
Nature" [here ])

Internalism: This is a newly emerging
point of view in science, with few antecedents, which include phenomenology,
the thinking of J.J. von Uexküll, and the autopoiesis model of Maturana
and Varela. Current major thinkers include Koichiro Matsuno, Yukio-Pegio
Gunji, Otto Roessler and George Kampis. My own perspective on this is
that internalism becomes necessary if we try to make a science which begins
with the fact that we are inside, as participants in, the universe that
we are studying. Internalism applies to such advanced
technological situations
as cosmological knowledge in the face of the finite speed of light (we
cannot get outside the universe, or see it whole) and operationalism,
as well as to the situation of a newborn infant trying to manage in the
world. Internalism is a viewpoint that accepts in advance limits
to knowledge,
and any viewpoint expressing limitations, like Herbert Simon's "bounded
rationality" is internalist. The problem of waste disposal is an important
currently visible internalist predicament.
Matsuno has been trying to examine
the most reduced internalist situations possible in a search for
principles.
Here we can place the internal predicament of a newborn infant, living
in the present progressive tense, with little stored record to aid it.
I focus on this situation because it brings to the fore the important
notion, from Charles Peirce, of vagueness. All aspects of nature are to
some degree vague, while our discourses -- especially natural science and
mathematics -- try to be as explicit as possible. This mismatch is another
reason to try to advance an internalist science. This has been begun in
a small way using logics that forgive the law of the excluded middle, like
fuzzy logic, dialectical and trialectical logics. But in these logics,
while set membership is unclear, set definition is still crisp (second order
fuzziness begins to atteck this limitation). This is not vague enough to
model the actual world as it appears.
Stated in other words,
the internalist
project can be viewed as an attempt to model immature systems, for which
the explicit descriptions of science are inadequate. The immature situation
is vague, generative, and with relatively large evolutionary potential.
The importance of this latter fact may be grasped by considering that,
biologically, humans can be viewed as neotenic apes. Evolution has here
not taken off from, or extended, mature stages, but has backed up and
worked from the fetal situation. Some have even argued that most organic
evolutionary progress (a notion rejected by neoDarwinians) has come about
in this way. I believe that we will have poor understanding of evolutionary
progress without an internalist science. For more see text, Internalism Summarized [here ]